Faith and Values: Religious experience and ordinary believers

April 28, 2012

William James, American philosopher and psychologist, pondered the role that experience plays in the religious lives of both ordinary believers and in the lives of what he called religious geniuses. In his 1902 book, "The Varieties of Religious Experience," James writes that religious geniuses are those people for whom religion comes not "as a dull habit, but as an acute fever." They experience religion in such a way that their beliefs get entangled with fixed ideas and obsessions, and they show signs of "nervous instability" and even "abnormal psychically visitations" that the psychologist might deem "pathological."

On these terms, few of us would even want to fit the category of "religious genius," but James' description of "ordinary believers" does look a bit dull. Ordinary believers are those whose religion has been "made for them by others," "communicated by tradition" and "retained by habit," so they seem passive, receptive and uninspired. This is not the exciting language of an "acute fever," yet these contrasting descriptions raise an interesting question about what "religious experience" means in the lives of "ordinary believers."

There is really no such thing as a religious experience divorced from a person's willingness to interpret an experience as religious. That statement may itself seem plain and quite dull, but is it not the case that we have all kinds of experiences all day long every day of our lives and only rarely do we cull one out as "religious"?

The issue is not so much having a religious experience as it is being willing to interpret and then decide that it is. This happens when we infuse an experience with some meaning and value that separates it from ordinary and routine and lend to it deep meaning, extraordinary value and connect it to transcendent possibilities.

A religious experience then is not simply a disclosure from beyond the limits of our own very small and ordinary perceptions and interpretations, but our willingness to expand our own range of interpretation.

Some religions seem to pay more attention to making room for personal experience than others. Zen Buddhism, for instance, focuses on the sudden enlightenment experience, which may be quite ordinary, like hearing a bird chirp or a bell clap.

Mary in the garden did not recognize the stranger until she heard her own name — how many times a day do we hear our own name? How often is that a religious experience? Those Emmaus travelers didn't have a "religious experience" of the stranger they were walking with until they sat down to break bread. Something happened, and part of what happened was recognizing that the ordinary was not so ordinary. Ordinary things hold possibilities for meaning beyond the routine. They draw us to a different awareness of ourselves and our surroundings.

In a just published book, "Moving the Mountain," Imam Feisel Abdul Rauf relates an experience he had as a boy riding a bus: "For what seemed like a long minute, I could feel my own boundaries dissolve. The boundaries of my self, my ego, just melted away. I felt a complete oneness with everything around me, and oneness with God. I knew the universe was the way it should be."

This is a widely reported if somewhat unusual experience that many people would describe as "religious." Freud called it the "oceanic feeling," and all kinds of people have experienced this sense of oneness.

What does it mean? People make decisions about what it means. Sometimes people come to faith from the inside out, from some inner spiritual movement or perception that changes their sense of who they are and how they are related to all around them. And the ego dissolves.

People sometimes have these experiences in nature — taking in a beautiful sunset, being transfixed by the ocean or awed by the majesty of mountains. "Nature mysticism" can transform a very common experience into something extraordinary and deeply meaningful. And it is an experience of connectedness, of being a part of something bigger than one's own self.

Imam Rauf believes that deep down all people desire such an experience, and that all people have the capacity for an experience like he had. Maybe, maybe not. Not everyone can dance; then again not everyone wants to. But the point is that the bus experience convinced the Imam of God's reality and it has informed his own Muslim spirituality ever since.

The issue for faith is not whether we have had an experience like Moses with the burning bush or St. Paul on the Damascus road. The issue is whether we can be open to interpreting the experiences we have in ordinary life as so deeply meaningful that we are willing to claim them as religious.

Is it possible to find such an experience in the cup of coffee with a friend? Is it possible to find in the worship service you attend on a regular basis? Can something in the beauty of nature catch you up, or music, or the arresting vision that takes form in the stone Michelangelo chiseled?

Finding the extraordinary in the ordinary is the ego-dissolving experience upon which spiritual growth and development rests. The possibilities for deeper meaning are not locked in a secret place that only geniuses know how to open. They are everywhere and always possible. They may be desired, but desire alone cannot get you to them. They require an open heart and awareness that every moment, as a moment of experience, is — or could be — something more than what we ordinarily think it is.

Lloyd Steffen is university chaplain and professor of religion studies at Lehigh University.